Bonom: from the street to the stage

(© Ian Dykmans)

Brussels graffiti artist Vincent Glowinski aka Bonom is currently touring with his first fully-fledged dance production. In the intriguing Méduses, movement, images, and music blend together seamlessly.

Certainly, it was a big step from the street to the theatre scene,” says the former street artist who had attained the status of a living legend as Bonom. “I primarily had to accept that I was a novice again. That is accompanied by tremendous fragility. And what’s more, I always used to work alone. But a dance production is group work, so I had to learn to communicate with other people about an artistic process, and thus expose my vulnerabilities.”

In Méduses, the Brussels-based French-man doesn’t wield a paint roller, but he does paint with his body to the tones of live music. A camera suspended above him records all his movements and a computer programme then converts them into drawings that continuously appear and disappear. “To a certain extent, it is comparable to making those monumental murals. Beforehand I had to make a meticulous production and rehearse all my movements. When you are stuck against a wall, you cannot just base what you’re doing on what you see, especially in the dark. In other words, the graffiti was created thanks to the premeditated route that my body followed. In Méduses the camera has replaced the paintbrush. The lines of the drawings determine most of my movements, primarily of my arms, shoulders, and my back. But sometimes it is the reverse: my body moves freely and the figures follow.”

One of the first images Glowinski created in this way was of a jellyfish (“méduse” in French). “That image just appeared when I opened my arms and closed them again. That was the beginning of the whole thing, and it is also a very fundamental, essential image. Increasingly sophisticated morphologies then emerged from those jellyfish. There is a kind of narrative or evolution in the sequence of the images. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that at the beginning, most of the representations were of animals and were quite naturalistic, but they later started morphing into mythical creatures. Gradually, the production becomes like a trip in trance, and you start seeing the images as chimeras.”

In any case, Glowinski really enjoyed his first experience with the performing arts, under the auspices of Wim Vandekeybus’s company Ultima Vez; “Yes, I would definitely like to continue experimenting like this. But I would like to blend the theatrical with the pictorial even more. And in the future, I might want to exchange the black box of the theatre with a more unusual place, or even a public space.”

MÉDUSES • 1/11, 20.15, €15, Flagey, Heilig Kruisplein/place Sainte-Croix, Elsene/Ixelles, 02-641.10.20, www.flagey.be